The invention relates to a method for assisting an operator of a household appliance, in particular a domestic appliance, when making contact with a customer service department for the household appliance with the aid of a portable communications device. The invention also relates to a portable communications device as well as to a system with a portable communications device and a household appliance, in particular a domestic appliance.
Interest here focuses in particular on the automatic setting-up of a communications link between a portable communications device—for example a mobile phone, a portable personal computer (e.g. personal digital assistant) or the like—of the user of a household appliance and an external communications facility of a customer service department or one which is remote from the household appliance. It is known that the operator of a household appliance can make contact with the customer service department, for example if the household appliance is defective. For example the operator can call the customer service department or send a message to the customer service department, for example via the Internet. However the operator does not always have customer service department contact data to hand; it is frequently necessary to search for such contact data and this takes time. Also it is often problematic for the operator to describe the problem that has occurred. The customer service department is not always given an accurate picture of the observed problem and is therefore not always accurately informed of what is actually defective.